Non Sequitur (episode)
Harry Kim is placed in an alternate timeline where he was never assigned to Voyager. Summary Teaser As Harry Kim wakes up, he can hear the distant voice of Captain Janeway, who says something about an emergency transport. She calls out his name several times as her voice transitions into that of his girlfriend Libby, who wakes him gently. Harry stares out the window of his apartment as He discovers that he is back on Earth, in the city of San Francisco. Act One A disbelieving Harry can't believe that he is back on earth, with Libby. She reminds him he has an important meeting and rushes a still stunned Harry to shower and get dressed. Harry emerges from the bathroom dressed in his standard yellow uniform and is obviously still trying to process exactly what happened. He asks her the stardate: 49011. He realizes it's not the past, but the present, and that he isn't dreaming. He runs through the other possibilities: Holodeck? Hallucination? Libby, exasperated, tells him they both have long days ahead of them and they need to get to work. He responds to her like he would if he were facing an alien interrogation, and tells her he is from . She is not amused, telling him the memorial service was two months ago and he shouldn't joke about it. Kim leaves his apartment and continues to look around the area with disbelief. From a coffee shop named Cosimo's he gets what he has apparently been drinking for eight months, a Vulcan mocha, from Cosimo. From him, Kim learns that he is giving the presentation of the new ship design he--Harry--has created. Harry asks the man how long he has been coming to this shop, and Cosimo tells him that it's been nearly every day since he graduated from Starfleet Academy. Harry also learns that he and Libby are engaged, but before he can ask more questions, Lieutenant Lasca arrives and hurries him to the important meeting. Lasca and Kim have been working on an experimental runabout, the ''Yellowstone'', but since Kim has no idea what it is, he does not have the warp coil schematic he needed for their presentation to Admiral Strickler and company. Lasca starts to explain the new design of the Yellowstone-Class runabout they have been working on. It has tetryon based plasma warp nacelles. The admiral interrupts, asking how they will address the dilithium fracture problem, since tetryon plasma can disrupt subspace. Lasca confidently introduces Harry to answer that problem, while Harry sits in his chair with a panicked look on his face--He has no idea what Lasca is talking about! Act Two The admiral and his staff wait impatiently as Harry struggles to come up with an answer. He finally feigns illness and asks if the presentation can be continued at a later date. The admiral, however, is leaving on a 3-week tour of the Cardassian border in a few days, so the presentation will have to wait until after then. Lasca leaves, disgusted with Harry for blowing the meeting. Harry enters what is apparently his office in Headquarters. He sees his diploma from Starfleet Academy and the design schematics for the'' Yellowstone''. Kim looks up information on himself and Voyager. He finds that, perhaps in an alternate timeline, his request to transfer to Voyager was denied. Instead, Kim joined Starfleet Engineering Corps, He learns that he has had a short but so far distiguished career with the engineering corps. He asks the computer if any temporal anomalies have been reported in the last 48 hours, and finds that there were none. He also tries to find information on the loss of Voyager, but that information is classfied security level 3 or above. Harry, however, has no problem accessing the information since he was a member of Voyager's crew, or at least he thought he was! He finds that his friend Danny Byrd took what would have been his place as operations officer of Voyager. Harry leaves his office more confused than ever. He returns to his neighborhood, but forgets where his apartment was. Cosimo points him in the right direction, and tells him everything will be fine. However, after Harry leaves, Cosimo watches him with a concerned yet knowing look--there appears to be more to the middle-aged man than meets the eye. Returning "home", he finds Libby there and she asks if he is okay, and she is concerned when he is still confused about what is going on. He asks her to tell him she loves him, like they haven't seen each other for months. He spins her a story much like what happened to Voyager. Their conversation becomes more intimate as the two kiss passionately. Later, it has grown dark and Libby sleeps in Harry's arms. He is lying awake and finally gets out of bed and smiles upon finding his familiar clarinet. He goes to the computer and looks up information on Tom Paris, unaware that Libby has awakened behind him and is coming over to investigate. He finds that Tom was paroled on Stardate 48702 and is now living in Marseilles, France. Libby wants to know what is going on. He tries to tell her nothing is going on, but she tells him he is a bad liar, and that he is acting strange, even to the point where Lasca called and wanted to know if something was going on. Harry tells her to trust him. and then tells her that he shouldn't be here (in this reality). She thinks that he is getting cold feet about getting married, and thinks he should talk to a counselor or a neurologist. Harry tells her he has something to do first and leaves for Marseilles to find Tom Paris, leaving a confused and hurt Libby behind. In Marseilles, Harry finds Tom wearing civilian clothes and playing pool in the real-life'' Chez Sandrine's. Harry greets Tom as a friend, but Tom doesn't even recognize Harry. Act Three Harry tries to convince Paris that they served together on ''Voyager, but Tom tells a different story. After he got to Deep Space Nine, he was involved in a bar fight with a Ferengi, and was arrested by the Station's shapeshifting constable. Starfleet revoked his parole, and Tom never went on Voyager. He isn't sorry about that, considering what happened to it, but Harry remembers the story differently. He was the one who nearly got into the fight with the Ferengi over the Lobi crystals, and Tom did lead Voyager into the Badlands. Tom, of course, remembers no such events, and points out that he is here on Earth and obviously never went on Voyager. Harry wants Tom to return to Starfleet HQ with him and run a simulation of what happened during his shuttle accident. Tom laughs at the idea, and tells Harry to go back to Starfleet and tell his superiors that he is not interested in being a pawn in their game. Harry tells Tom that Tom once told him he treated life as one big game, and he never worried about the rules until he lost the game. He then tells Tom what Tom had told him what he thought would have happened if he hadn't gone on Voyager: That he would have become a loser and a drunk--and that is exactly what has happened. Enraged, Tom takes a swing at him, but in his half-drunken state Harry is easily able to subdue him. Harry storms out, leaving an embarrassed Tom face down on the pool table. As he leaves, Harry doesn't notice one of the bar Patrons who watches as he leaves--it is Cosimo! Harry returns to his apartment, but there are security personnel in his apartment, and Lasca informs him that Starfleet knows what he had been doing--breaking into classified files using forged security access codes (his own, from Voyager.) Harry tries to explain, but he is ordered to go to Starfleet HQ under escort. Admiral Strickler questions how Harry can have access to Voyager's information, and is skeptical about Harry's claim that he was assigned to Voyager ''since he is on Earth. Harry tries to explain that reality has been altered somehow and he needs to attempt to restore it, but nobody is willing to believe him. The admiral wonders why he went to see Tom Paris, a convicted traitor and Maquis sympathizer. Harry finally realizes that they think he is a Maquis spy, and he refuses to answer any further questions without counsel present. Harry is placed under house arrest, and is then given an ankle bracelet and is informed he is prohibited from off-world travel. Harry is dismissed with a warning from the admiral. Act Four Returning to his neighborhood, he meets Cosimo who reveals that Kim is not imagining that reality had been altered. He, Cosimo, was sent to Earth to watch Harry and make sure everything was all right, but now it is clear that it's not. He tells Harry that his people exist in what Harry would call a temporal inversion fold of the space-time matrix. He informs Kim that his shuttle collided with their timestream, causing some of reality to be altered. Kim asks for help in restoring the proper reality, but Cosimo admits that they don't know how. The events happened by accident and the conditions that existed before the accident may be impossible to re-create and that there is no guarantee what will happen if he does--he could end up anywhere in the space-time continuum. Cosimo asks him if he really wants to give up his life here--He has a successful Starfleet career and a beautiful woman who loves him. Kim asks him what about Danny Byrd and Tom Paris, who's lives were changed for the worse as a result of the altered timeline. Cosimo relents and gives him coordinates of the time stream in this region of space, and wishes him luck if he goes through with his plan. In his apartment, Harry attempts to remove the ankle bracelet. Libby catches him, and asks him if he wants to go to prison. She tells him she hardly knows him any more, but he assures her that he is still the guy who was in her seat ah the Ktarian music festival, and the guy who took 3 weeks to work up the courage to ask her out, and who still wakes up at night calling her name. She wonders, then why he is trying to get away from her. He tells her he wants to stay more than anything, but that he needs to restore the correct timeline, and that he wouldn't be the Harry she loves otherwise. Suddenly, the tampering alarm on the bracelet goes off, and Starfleet Security is alerted, Two security officers beam in, and Harry escapes out the window while Libby closes it behind him and blocks them. Harry runs down the fire escape, almost getting caught in the process. He is chased across the plaza by a security officer who tackles him to the ground, but this reality's Tom Paris punches out the security guard and they both walk away quickly. Act Five After their escape, Tom and Harry take temporary shelter in a service alleyway, Harry tells Tom that he has a plan to restore the correct reality, but he will need a ship and a good pilot. They can break the ''Yellowstone ''out of spacedock, and Tom can fly it. Tom beams them to Harry's office using a hand-portable site-to-site transporter. In Harry's office, Harry accesses the runabout's access codes, and they beam to the ''Yellowstone. Tom flies them through the rapidly closing spacedock doors, and they head for the time-stream coordinates. A Nebula-Class starship is pursuing them, thinking the two are trying to steal the prototype runabout. The starship fires, knocking out their shields with just a few shots. The prototype was not yet complete, and many of the safety interlocks were not installed. The ship begins to lose anti-matter containment. Harry gets the idea to vent the tetryon plasma, which disrupts sub-space, from the ship's warp nacelles, which would cause the pursuing ship to stall when it hit the resulting plasma cloud. They do, and the pursuing starship is slowed, but their joy is short-lived when the warp core begins to overload. Harry desperately tries to recreate all the conditions that were in place before his accident as best he can remember. They impact the time stream, but nothing happens, and Harry remembers that he was in the midst of an emergency transport. The ship loses antimatter containment, and the core will breach in 25 seconds. Tom orders Harry to get onto the transporter pad, but Harry doesn't want to go until they can contain the breach. Tom tells him that if this works, everything will be back to the way it should be and he'll find Tom back on Voyager. He then shoves Harry onto the transporter pad and beams him into the time stream just as the ship explodes. Harry opens his eyes and finds he is back in his correct reality, and Captain Janeway is still hailing him, telling him to drop the shields of his shuttle and prepare for emergency beam-out. Voyager manages to beam Harry out of his shuttle just before it suffers a hull breach, and Harry, back on Voyager, is relieved to find Tom Paris alive and on the bridge. He tells Tom he owes him one, much to Tom's bewilderment. Memorable Quotes "Where are you going?" "Marseille, France." "What for?" "I've got to see Paris." "But you just said you were going to Marseille." : - Libby and Harry "Anyway, I got as far as Deep Space 9, where I got into a bar fight with a Ferengi and I was thrown into the brig by a very unpleasant shapeshifter." : - Tom Paris "Why does everyone say relax when they're about to do something terrible?" : - Harry Kim Background Information *In the alternate timeline, Tom Paris (who refers to both Quark and Odo) was apparently with Voyager as far as Deep Space 9, where the ship left without him. This is consistent with our timeline, where Tom interrupted Quark's attempt to make a profit off of Harry and subsequently became friends with the ensign; had this not occurred and Voyager left Tom behind, the two would have never known each other. *Libby gives the stardate in this episode, which makes Harry realize he is still in the present. They establish that it has been eight months since the events of . *Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Ethan Phillips (Neelix) and Jennifer Lien (Kes) do not appear in this episode. *Jack Shearer previously played Ruwon in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode . He would later play Hayes, another admiral, in and the Star Trek: Voyager episodes and . .]] * The exterior footage of Starfleet Headquarters was recycled from ; as such, this episode is the only time a Tellarite appears on VOY. *The shot of the runabout exploding is taken from the DS9 episode . *The shot of Starfleet Command with people walking around near the Golden Gate Bridge is taken from . *The Spacedock door was a reuse of the door of the Dyson sphere from . *When Harry returns from Marseille, France, the shot of his shuttle entering Starfleet Command is taken from the original version of when Kirk arrived in San Francisco. *Another shot of San Francisco at night with the Golden Gate Bridge is taken from the beginning of . *The runabout appears both with and without the rollbar. *The crew roster of the alternate timeline Voyager shown on Harry Kim's desktop monitor repeats the same crewmembers on the same page. *This episode marks the only appearance of a runabout on the series. *With the exceptions of Paris and Kim, none of the main cast appear in this episode until the final minute (although Janeway's voice is heard in the beginning). *When Harry comes up out of the subway, there are three colored shapes on the railing. A circle, triangle and square. These were the original logo shapes for the UPN network and Voyager was one of the first flagship shows of the new network. * Harry's office is in the Main Complex, Level 6, Subsection 47. * Voyager loses a second shuttlecraft, the Drake, in this episode, the first being lost in . * One of the possible theories of Harry's actions by Starfleet Command is that he is impersonated by an alien, which foreshadows the threat of Changelings infiltrating Earth in and later in the same year. Although not directly stated, it seems that Starfleet Command is already cautious about a possible Changeling threat. * The episode title derives from the Latin, "It does not follow". The phrase is used in English to mean something that doesn't make sense. * This episode is one of seven Star Trek episodes with Latin names. The others are , , , , and . Video and DVD releases *UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 2.1, . :CIC Video released the four season 1 "hold-over" episodes in their production order, as part of the first season release. This is the second episode in the second season release, volume 2.1 having begun with . Volume 2.2 begins with . *As part of the VOY Season 2 DVD collection. Links and References Starring * Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway Also Starring * Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay * Roxann Biggs-Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres * Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris * Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok * Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim Guest Stars *Louis Giambalvo as Cosimo *Jennifer Gatti as Libby *Jack Shearer as Strickler *Mark Kiely as Lasca Co-Star *Majel Barrett as Computer Voice Uncredited Co-Stars *Irving E. Lewis as a Starfleet security officer *Tom Morga as a Starfleet security officer References Badlands, Byrd, Daniel, Cardassian, Cochrane Medal of Excellence, Cosimo's, Deep Space 9, ''Drake'', shuttlecraft, drive plasma; egg, emergency transport, ''Exeter'', USS, New Zealand Penal Settlement, ; gamma radiation, Ktarian music festival, Lobi crystals, Maquis, Marseille, Marseille Starfleet base, microcellular scan, , New Zealand, Odo, Old Town Festival, Orlando, David, Parsons, Michael, Peterson, Sandra, Platt, Jerry, Porter, Amanda, Quark, Risa, runabout, San Francisco, Sandrine's, security anklet, site-to-site transporter, space-time continuum, Starfleet Academy, Starfleet Engineering Corps, Starfleet Headquarters, Starfleet Science Academy, Starfleet Security, temporal inversion, tetryons, tetryon plasma, time stream, Trans Francisco, type-8 shuttlecraft, Vulcan mocha, ''Yellowstone'', USS, , Yridian |next= }} de:Der Zeitstrom es:Non Sequitur fr:Non Sequitur nl:Non Sequitur Category:VOY episodes